


The Eyes

by HyperKid



Category: Samurai Deeper Kyo
Genre: Angst and Feels, Death Disease, F/M, Gore and Decaying Body, Hurt and not much comfort, M/M, Medusa Eyes, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 16:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13955595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyperKid/pseuds/HyperKid
Summary: Hishigi doesn't know how many Medusa eyes he has now. But he remembers everything else.





	The Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> HK: Please leave your heart in the bucket at the door. Otherwise I'm just gonna break it.   
> Akira: You’re really not aging out of us, are you?   
> HK: Not until I’m cold and dead. And have finished working out what the fuck Shinrei/Akari is going to look like.   
> Akira: … For all that you claim to love me, please leave me out of that.   
> HK: but you’re my INTRO SIDEKICK  
> Akira: Why aren’t you mine?   
> HK: Because I am the evil and omnipotent author, and you’re basically secretly Haku from Naruto if Haku was less dead.   
> Akira: I’m at least 75% sure I’m insulted. I might kill you.   
> HK: I might write Akari in, now surrender to my will. We’re here to FEELSBANG EVERYONE for our new website debut!  
> Akira: YOU don’t even like Fubuki. This isn’t going to upset anyone.   
> HK: No, but we all love Hishigi. And he’s an angstpanda 
> 
> Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. But I’m working on it!
> 
> WARNINGS!! Angst, body horror, character death, Fubuki having EMOTIONS, Hishigi having EMOTIONS, nothing is good and everything is bad. 
> 
> HK: It is WEIRD not to have a porn disclaimer. Not sure I like that.

How many eyes does he have now? Hishigi supposes that he should count them. That he should know for sure, so he knows what he has. Knows the strength of his curses. 

He doesn’t. 

He can’t bring himself to. 

He cleans and dresses his own wounds with the same clinical precision he uses on his subjects. Those, he counts. 

Numbers are easier than names, though he doesn’t know when he reached seven digits. Well, he tells himself that he doesn’t. Tells himself there are far too many to remember, and none of them matter anyway, not if he can cure the disease. 

Knows it’s a lie. 

He remembers all of their faces. Too many now to see them all in dreams whenever he manages to sleep. So many children, babies, adults, with the glowing red eyes and those from before, from when he was truly searching for a cure. 

The eyes of his clan, his family, his world, all looking to him for a cure. 

He can’t bear to think of the eyes. 

He remembers the first one. The first patient. The first eye. 

It seemed a cruel joke to him now, that Hitoki would be the first one taken. There was no one more protected in all the Mibu lands, the sister of the leader of the Four Elders, wife of another elder, dear friend to the third and doctor. 

Hishigi remembered the man he used to be. Serene, confident in his skills. Certain that whatever came up, he would find a cure. 

He hated that man now. 

He remembered the man Fubuki used to be. Loving, affectionate, certain that nothing he loved would ever slip away from him. Certain in his skills as a necromancer would defeat any death. 

At first, Hitoki’s illness had been a mere oddity. She had ignored it, spent her time caring for her husband and daughter. Fubuki had been the one to notice the coughing, to notice that it had gone on for weeks. He brought her to Hishigi then, asked for a cure. 

And Hishigi, arrogant fool, had promised one in an hour. On that first examination, he got the first pangs of concern. Something felt... wrong. There was no bacteria, no virus eating away at Hitoki’s body. How could there be? She was the elite of the elite, the most holy Mibu clan. Time could not touch her. 

But the death disease could. 

In his own way, Hishigi had loved Hitoki deeply. She was kind and sweet, gentle as her brother, with a laugh like sunshine. And she brought such smiles to Fubuki’s face. The four of them had been nigh inseparable, when duty was not calling. 

Hitoki never minded the closeness between her husband and his dearest friend, as he had never minded sharing Fubuki’s heart with her. 

They understood the places each filled in Fubuki’s life, and in the Mibu clan as a whole. 

He had counted his blessings so many times that it was Muramasa’s beloved sister who had captured Fubuki’s heart. 

He wished now it had been anyone else. 

Hishigi became an expert in the death disease. Any member of the clan showing symptoms was immediately brought to his lab, any human psychics who might be of use taken. 

He even began making creations of his own, simple life forms to adapt to the disease, gradually becoming more complex. 

He remembers all of their names. Remembers the moment when names were too painful, and he fell to numbers. 

It seemed the cruelest joke of all that it was not Hishigi, but Fubuki who first noticed that Hishigi had the death disease. 

**

With Hitoki’s death, with so many now becoming sick, Hishigi had locked himself in the lab without food nor sleep for weeks. 

The needs of his body couldn’t override the need in his heart, in his soul to understand and save what was most precious. His family. 

There were no mirrors to reflect his increasingly gaunt and pale face, no servant who would dare advise him. 

Not until Fubuki came to him, to his door, did Hishigi notice how faint he was. He couldn’t even rise to answer the first knock. 

He opened his mouth to call out, then fell back in his chair, a month’s exhaustion falling on him in an instant. 

Fortunately Fubuki had never been shy, and when his knock wasn’t answered he marched straight in. The sight of his friend, half dead in his seat, stopped him cold. 

Grief had left its all too visible marks on Hishigi too. His face was wan, eyes red rimmed with too many hidden tears and purple with the lack of sleep. He knew Hishigi’s despair all too well, because it was his own. 

The only thing he didn’t know was the defeat he saw in those empty black eyes. 

Fubuki crossed the room in a heartbeat, checking his friend’s pulse and cursing at how weak it was. Staring around the room, seeing not one empty cup or plate he felt rage blossom in his chest. 

“What are you doing?!” He demanded, too many pent up emotions raising his voice to an uncharacteristic shout. 

Hishigi tried to stir himself at the sight of his friend’s distress, but all he could manage was a weak cough. Blood flecked his lips, spraying down across his clothes but when he raised a hand to wipe he couldn’t stop it from shaking. 

Fubuki caught his wrist, eyes fixed on the blood as a new world of horror opened before him. “Not you too...” 

All of the rage, all of the volume, all of the passion fled in that moment, and Fubuki looked more broken than he ever had before. 

The great necromancer, master of the water school, had never looked fragile. 

Now he crumpled, eyes locking with Hishigi’s in a desperate plea for this not to be true. For the disease that had taken his wife not to have stolen his lover too. 

Somehow, Fubuki’s weakness stirred Hishigi where his strength hadn’t, and he forced his ailing body into focus. He stared down at the blood on his fingers, mind racing, tabulating. 

He had assumed any weakness was a lack of food, or sleep, or some more basic need that was going unmet, but no. No, his joints ached, his throat burned, and he couldn’t seem to draw enough breath. 

No one knew the death disease better. 

The moment Hishigi’s eyes closed in defeat, acknowledgement, confirmation, Fubuki exploded. 

His hand struck out, catching his dearest friend across the face and then yanking him to his feet by his shirt. “No! Not you too! Muramasa has betrayed us! I have no one left! Not you too!” 

Hishigi opened his eyes blearily, forcing himself to focus on the distraught water master’s face, and was stunned beyond reason to see tears in his eyes. 

Fubuki, the cool, calm, composed warrior, the pride of his clan and protector of them all, never lost control. He never showed fear, pain, or hesitation. He never broke. 

Until now. 

Hishigi’s mind raced, jolted back to life by the end of the world. What could have done it? 

“Muramasa... gone?” He managed to ask, that shaking left hand rising to cover Fubuki’s on his shirt. 

As quickly as he had seized him, Fubuki let him go and Hishigi dropped onto his chair once more, but now there was a fire inside him. 

“Yes.” The reply was bitter, cold, and already Fubuki was mastering himself, furious at his momentary lapse. He brushed the tears away, turning his back on the friend whose death he could see as clear as day. 

Hishigi sat quietly for a moment, processing this news. It didn’t matter why. It didn’t matter that he was tired, that the disease had no cure. Fubuki needed him. 

When he looked up, it was the strength of one of the Four Elders that forced his weakened body to move, to straighten in his seat. 

“You have me, Fubuki. I will not abandon you.” There was such resolve there, such certainty in his voice that Fubuki’s bitter retort died on his lips. Instead, after a long moment, the white haired man nodded and swept from the room. 

Hishigi stared at his desk, his mind racing. The death disease had no cure; would have no cure without him. All he needed was time. 

He had so many ways to steal time. 

His eyes landed on the sealed curse jar at the back of his shelves. He had been experimenting, playing with ancient spells to devise a weapon. 

A weapon that protected its wielder from all harm. Made them immune to curses. Could surely hold back the disease. 

Cutting open his hand barely registered compared to the pain of sealing the spell, but when it was done Hishigi felt the power of the Medusa Eye flowing in his veins. 

He would not give in. 

** 

He had been wrong. 

He had thought one Eye would be enough, would give him the power to battle through and find a cure. But no cure came. 

No cure could come, as the Mibu clan’s greatest, most terrible secret was finally revealed. 

At first he tried to keep track, implanting the eyes to boost his failing body parts. Just one hand, just his knee, just his hip. 

After ten, he stopped counting. Losing a piece of himself day after day, both in body and in spirit. 

He remembered Mitarai Tokichiro, Akari, his precious number 13. She was so bright, so energetic and willing. 

The land outside the Mibu was cruel to those who were different, but Hishigi couldn’t bear to give her the home she deserved. 

Couldn’t find the time to do the one surgery he knew she wished for, but never spoke of. 

She had been of inestimable help to him and his work, a healing genius beyond any he had ever seen. Even Saishi of the Five Stars was little more than a puppeteer next to Akari. 

And she had been devoted. Full of light and smiles, brightening his day simply by walking into his lab, though he couldn’t show it. He had seen too many loved ones die. 

And when she said she loved him, a broken old man waiting for death, he saw a use for her. A way to make her powerful, strong, the one he trusted beyond all others as his guard. 

A way to close her heart to him. 

She had been so excited to receive the Medusa Eye. He had told each of his assistants about it as another method that had been tried and failed, though he say he had been the test case. 

The power was as seductive to sweet Mitarai as it had been to so many before; a weapon that made one near invincible, unbeatable in battle. 

A weapon that could stop anyone from hurting her ever again. 

He wanted to protect her. 

From the cruel hands of men. From the era of war they lived in. From himself. 

When the Eye had driven Mitarai from him, the transformation to Ashura, perfect weapon, still incomplete, part of him was relieved. 

He had begun the curse to seal her soul, but deep in his heart, he didn’t want her light to go out. To make Akari a lifeless doll, loyal only to his will would have solved the problem of her sweet love. 

He didn’t see until too late that it would also destroy her. That it would destroy him. 

Self loathing was one of only two constants over the next... was it only twenty years? A mere two decades to go from his dear 13 to over two hundred thousand? 

Yes... it must have been. His children were born in batches, dozens, hundreds, thousands at a time, a thousand ideas and permutations flickering and dying like fireflies. 

It was too painful to tell himself he was looking for a cure. When the Crimson King made his announcement, gave them permission to die, he fell into the new project wholeheartedly. 

Perhaps he had failed. Perhaps he couldn’t save his clan. Save himself. But he could create something that could. Something stronger, more powerful than any of the Mibu who had gone before! 

Something that could survive the death disease. 

**

He knows Fubuki hates to see the eyes. Hates the reminder that his only friend, his lover, his whole world is a half dead corpse, animated only by devotion. 

But they so rarely touch any more that it doesn’t matter. 

There are no more stolen moments, hot caresses of skin on skin, lip on lip. 

Their clan is dying. 

Their people are dying. 

His children are dying. 

He is dying. 

What would be the point? 

But still they gravitate to each other, quiet moments alone in their company with no one to see, separated by distance but their hearts beating as one. 

It’s enough. Soft words, or the time they spend in silence, just close, just feeling the pain together, gives Hishigi a reason to carry on. 

To carve himself open over and over, to create and raise children only to watch them die, to be reminded in every other instant of his failure. 

Keeping Fubuki going is enough for him. 

Because he knows that if it came to it, he would cut his very heart from his chest for Fubuki. 

How could he do anything else?

**Author's Note:**

> HK: In completely unrelated news, I BEAT NANOWRIMO LAST YEAR AND IMMA BRAG ABOUT IT! Now do please leave a review and tell me if I hurt your heart and if not how I could have hurt it more. I’m always looking to improve.


End file.
